


The Fleshy Thing

by elementalv



Category: Cthulhu Mythos - H. P. Lovecraft, The Lost Thing - Shaun Tan
Genre: Character Study, Crossover, Gen, Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-21
Updated: 2011-12-21
Packaged: 2017-10-27 16:31:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,929
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/297830
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elementalv/pseuds/elementalv
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's not easy, being one of the Great Old Ones, and Zesh-Uzzom should know.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Fleshy Thing

**Author's Note:**

  * For [belantana](https://archiveofourown.org/users/belantana/gifts).



I am Zesh-Uzzom, singular and magnificent. I have seen the birth, dimming, and death of a thousand million stars, I have watched the birth, dimming, and death of a million billion lives. I am eternal and inescapable, and I can strike fear into the heart of any puling thing that crawls on dirt. My gleaming carapace is the color of blood spilling fresh and bright from the belly of a fleshy thing, and the bright sheen of my arms is evidence of my dread, deadly grace. Of my rack, none has ever been equal to my harsh and implacable will, though many thought they could somehow claim a share of my radiant evil. Of those who once claimed “superiority” to my incandescent glory, only dead Cthulu remains, caught in restless dreams of long lost power as its ever diminishing sycophants cling to the perishing hope that it will one day awaken and take their miserable lives.

I still drop into its dreams every so often to see if it’s ready to admit sour defeat to an enemy it never thought worthwhile. Cthulu turns away from me every time, sullen in failure and unwilling to accept that not only have I prevented it from ruling this piece of rock, but I have also successfully earned all rights to it, and there’s not a Great Old One around who could possibly disagree, no matter what some of them say. It’s jealousy, of course, because they can’t stand that I won where they failed.

As for Cthulu, instead of answering like anything with even a drop of manners would, it starts dreaming again, taking refuge in images of – well. The images themselves are overwrought bits of melodramatic claptrap, which is about the nicest thing I can say. It makes sense, given the source. They’re also considerably behind the times. Cthulu never could let go of the past and accept the simple fact of evolution.

I, on the other hand, have moved with the times. Yes, certainly, blood and dismemberment once had a certain charm, but the plain fact of the matter is that once you allow your followers to bathe in each other’s blood, you end up with very few followers left. This is why dead Cthulu is dead in the first place and left only with memories to comfort it until at last, order dissolves into chaos, and we are all left to rot in peace. This is also why I alone am the greatest of the Great Old Ones – I don’t try to stand in the way of progress.

And oh, what progress there has been. When I first arrived on this damp bit of mud, the crawling fleshy things had advanced considerably farther than they really should have, given Cthulu’s presence. When I discovered that it had chosen to lie down about as far away from the inhabitants as it possibly could, I understood its failure.

Not that it believed me when I went to talk to it about the problem.

“Go away,” it said. “You can’t possibly begin to understand the depravity that drives my plans forward.”

“Oh, please,” I told it. “You’ve barely got a foothold in their consciousness, and that’s not nearly enough to influence them in the direction you want them to go.”

“Wars!” it cried, as if that were some sort of accomplishment. “Torture! Slaughter!”

“Reason!” I answered. “Compassion! Healing! They’ve developed the capacity to be generous while you’ve been sulking down here for the last million years. Your master plan is a shambles, and you might as well give up on it.”

Cthulu turned its back on me and refused to speak again that day. Honestly, it behaved no better than a shoggoth, so I felt no compunction in remaining to set things to rights.

As I settled in, I could see why Cthulu was convinced its so-called master plan was working, given all the wars. Quite a few innocent fleshy things lost their life on a regular basis thanks to its presence, but when I added up the numbers, there wasn’t nearly enough senseless death to account for Cthulu’s mindless optimism. And what little senseless death there was, was confined to discrete populations. Most all of the other fleshy things not directly involved in the wanton destruction tended to send help rather than get caught up in a local maelstrom of mindless fury.

I might have felt sorry for Cthulu at that point, but it was its own fault for secreting itself so far away from the living. I’ve no doubt whatsoever that it still believes that being too close to the fleshy things will somehow make them implode or go stark, staring mad. I’ve also no doubt that it thinks far too highly of itself.

In any event, it wasn’t difficult to see where Cthulu went wrong and what needed to be done to correct the situation. To begin with, the wars needed to stop; they were feeding too much into that nascent streak of good in the rest of the population. With a hint here and a nudge there, it was frighteningly easy to end the bloodshed – a fact which was absolutely ridiculous. Had Cthulu been doing a proper job of it, they never would have stopped killing one another, and they certainly wouldn’t have been able to begin venturing out to the cold black space I once roamed.

It didn’t take very long at all for me to halt all progress and creativity and turn their minds toward building labyrinthine constructs of rules and protocols that were nearly impossible to penetrate, let alone navigate from start to finish. Simple though my solution may seem, it was certainly far more successful than Cthulu’s grand plan of giving the fleshy thing ulcers from a vague and nameless anxiety.

“Where’s the pervasive evil in that?” I asked once, in an effort to get it to acknowledge how low it had sunk in my esteem.

“You couldn’t possibly understand,” it said with a sniff.

I’ll tell you now that you really don’t want to be in the same cavern when Cthulu sniffs. Its tentacles are covered in a putrid ooze of flora that is _not_ normal nor even slightly attractive. And when those tentacles flop around, that ooze splatters everywhere. It took me a week of bathing in the rock’s dim star before I felt clean enough to return to my self-imposed exile. Before I undertook that trip, however, I mentioned that the anxiety he pushed out into the world had done little more than accelerate the development of pharmaceuticals that could deal with the fleshy things’ persistent acid reflux.

It was not grateful in the least for my generous and constructive criticism.

Had I been mired in the past, I would have laid waste to its rotting city beneath the waves after Cthulu attempted to curse me, but as I’ve pointed out numerous times, I am progressive and have no need to resort to such behavior. It’s more than enough that Cthulu gnashes its tentacles in fruitless frustration over the fact that I have bested its pathetic efforts.

I haven’t been back to visit since then, but I have undertaken to walking amongst my worshippers. It’s not difficult to do, since they generally don’t see me, though one time, a fleshy thing did happen to look up long enough to have its eyes opened to my presence. It wasn’t terribly bright. It seemed to believe I was lost and alone, and its compassion made me shudder in distaste and wonder just how persistent empathy actually was in this miserable species. I attempted to ask it, but of course, its brain was entirely too small and limited to understand what I was saying.

I, on the other hand, comprehended perfectly well its intentions and thought I might as well take care of this small problem before it became a major one, so I did as it wished and followed it around as it attempted to find another fleshy thing that might be willing to take responsibility for me. The prospect was amusing enough that I allowed it to continue, and what a lovely decision that was. That night, tucked away in a grim little building, the fleshy thing fed me trinkets that spoke of warmth and love and all the good things I intend to end.

One day, though not soon.

Because those trinkets – the fleshy thing called them _Christmas ornaments_ – were exceedingly delicious. If I bring about an end to all hope and creativity, I’ll also bring about an end to such snacks, so the entire situation still needs some thinking through on my part. Again, though, this is all due to my ability to imagine a reality beyond the “crush all hope, let despair thrive, let misery reign” line of thinking that Cthulu favors. It can’t see beyond the end of its own tentacles, let alone to the possibilities inherent in allowing a small thread of hope to survive, so I don’t see how it can continue to delude itself that it still has relevance.

At any rate, the fleshy thing soon gave up feeding me and went off to do what fleshy things do when the night is dark and cold, and I sat and pondered the state of the world. It was clear that the fleshy thing would persist in its efforts, so I spared a tendril of power to direct its search to further my own ends. The next day, the fleshy thing found the trail I left, and it took me to a building deep into the heart of fleshy thing territory.

The waves of crushing desolation that roiled out of the door when we entered were enough to gladden my heart for the next thousand years. The fleshy thing, on the other hand, felt a wave of compassion for me that was so strong it nearly brought me to my knees. It mistook my reaction for one of sorrow at the location, and I didn’t try to correct the impression it had. There was no point, really, not when a mi-go stood by, waiting to do my bidding.

The fleshy thing accepted the card the mi-go gave it, and led the way back to my domain. It was slow going, and more than once, I had to make obvious the direction we were to go. I would have just gone on by myself, but I had grown curious about the fleshy thing. Not only had it seen more of me than any other fleshy thing had, but it had also displayed a stubborn strand of _goodness_ that I was completely unable to root out. So I tolerated its compassion long enough to leave my scent on it and its descendents, thinking that I might one day discover the source of relentless grace it exuded.

Several generations of fleshy things have come and gone since that time, and the line of the one fleshy thing continues to this day. I look in on them every so often, though without letting them see me. I have no desire to go through _that_ nonsense again, especially as it seems the entire lot of them are immune to despair.

One of these days, I’ll deal with it. In the meantime, I can sit and watch as the fleshy things collapse in on themselves under the weight of their self-imprisonment.

I am Zesh-Uzzom, and in the language of the fleshy things, I am the heart of dismay, the bringer of rules, the black pit into which all creativity is rendered impotent.

**Author's Note:**

> I possibly should have warned for a Cthulu-Sue (Stu? Stue?) at the *start* of the story, but ~~I'm a coward~~ I didn't want to scare you off. Also, I'm moderately horrified with myself for even going there, but I couldn't *not* go there, given the tentacles.
> 
> So. Anyway. Happy Yuletide!


End file.
